RTM of Linux Integration Components for Hyper-V Now Available
After a short delay, the RTM build of the Linux Integration Components for Hyper-V can now be downloaded from connect.microsoft.com (You need to register for this - but registration is free and easy).
These integration components contain some critical features:
- High performance I/O drivers for networking and disk (both IDE and SCSI) for Linux under Hyper-V.
- An integrated video / mouse driver for Linux under Hyper-V.
- The kernel "Hypercall adapter".
A number of people have asked me what this last item is, so let me explain. Hyper-V and Xen (an open source hypervisor based virtualization solution that you are probably aware of) have very similar architectures - despite being developed in isolation from each other. The hypercall adapter is basically a layer that translates between the Xen hypercall API and the Hyper-V hypercall API. This allows you to install a Xen paravirtualized Linux kernel inside the virtual machine in order to get the best performance possible.
With this release we are still only supporting SuSE Linux - however you can search the connect newsgroup to see posts from users who have successfully installed the Linux integration components on other versions of Linux.
Cheers,
Ben
